Gen. Stanley McChrystal explains what most people get wrong about Navy SEALs

US
Navy SEALs train during an exercise on how to board an oil or gas
platform.Flickr/Mass Communication
Specialist 3rd Class Adam Henderson, US Navy

Most people think of Navy SEALs as superheroes who work
together like a real-life Avengers team.

The SEALs are undeniably remarkable, but for a different reason,
says retired four-star Gen. Stanley McChrystal in his book
"Team of Teams," co-written with Tantum
Collins, David Silverman, and Chris
Fussell. McChrystal led the US war in
Afghanistan before stepping down in 2010.

"Americans enjoy the exciting, cinematic vision of a squad of
muscle-bound Goliath boasting Olympian speed, strength, and
precision; a group whose collective success is the inevitable
consequence of the individual strengths of its members and the
masterful planning of a visionary commander," McChrystal writes,
before adding that this is the wrong lens to view them
in.

What makes Navy SEALs remarkable, he says, and what their
grueling training is meant to ingrain in them, is their intense,
selfless teamwork that allows them to process any challenge with
near telepathy.

He uses the example of when SEALs rescued captain Richard
Phillips from Somali pirates in 2009, as dramatized in the 2013
film "Captain Phillips."

To the public, McChrystal writes, that three SEAL snipers picked
off three pirates holding Phillips hostage at night and at sea
from a distance of 75 yards is what was truly impressive; the
thing is, those shots within the scope of military history may
have been difficult but were not "particularly dazzling." What
was worthy of attention, he says, was that each of the snipers
fired simultaneously at their targets, each recognizing the exact
moment when they had their shot.

"Such oneness is not inevitable, nor is it a fortunate
coincidence," McChrystal writes. "The SEALs forge it methodically
and deliberately."

Nearly
every SEAL candidate is physically capable of handling all
training challenges. Only the best learn how to work as an
intimate team.FlickrMass
Communication Specialist 2nd Class Shauntae Hinkle-Lymas, US
Navy

This unity is built into the brutal six-month training program
BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training),
which primarily tests drive and teamwork rather
than physical fitness like most people think.

The Navy reports that of the "160-some students in each entering
class, around 90 will drop before the course ends, most in the
first few weeks." Only about 10% drop out because they're
physically unable to progress. Those who succeed do so because
they have the required mental toughness and dedication to
teamwork.

Charles Ruiz, who serves as the officer in charge of the first
phase of BUD/S, tells McChrystal that his primary job is "taking
the idea of individual performance out of the lexicon on day
one."

On day one candidates are split into "boat teams" of five to
eight people who will work together for the next six months.
These teams learn to work together through non-verbal
communication in exercises like simulating explosive detonations
in pairs miles out at sea at night, with one candidate holding a
watch and the other a compass.

No candidate can do anything without a "swim buddy," meaning that
no one can travel by himself, even if it's just to the dining
hall. Anyone caught without a swim buddy usually gets the
punitive order to "get sandy": run into cold water and then
rapidly cover himself in sand on the shore.

As McChrystal notes, the result of this training is a collection
of super teams, not super soldiers.

This is because situations SEALs find themselves in are not
conducive to a traditional hierarchy. There would simply not be
enough time to get things done with a rigid chain of command in a
situation like a SEAL deciding to enter a storeroom of a
target house that wasn't in the floor plan his team studied,
McChrystal says.

He writes that he learned to take this same approach to
management as the commander of the Joint Special Operations
Command in the early 2000s, since Al Qaeda's organization was far
too complex and adaptable to be fought with a traditional
hierarchy.

It's also this SEAL approach to team building that he teaches
through his corporate consulting firm, the McChrystal Group.

"SEAL teams offer a particularly dramatic example of how
adaptability can be built through trust and a shared sense of
purpose, but the same phenomenon can be seen facilitating
performance in domains far from the surf torture of BUD/S,"
McChrystal writes.